From a Distance (9 page)

Luisa laughed, ‘She’s only seven, it’s so little to be off for two nights.’

Dora shook her head. ‘Oh no. It’s fine, and Benji needs to do this sort of thing with her, otherwise he’ll miss out completely. You’re just such an Italian, Mumma Lou, you’d have them all at home all their lives if you had your way. Sometimes I really need a night off, you know. How else can I ever meet anyone?’

‘Dora! What about today?’ Luisa nudged her. ‘Come on, let’s hear it. Was he nice? At all sexy? You have to tell me, it’s all about vicarious experience for me.’

Dora made a face, twisting a curl into her hair. ‘Frankly, you’re not missing much. He was a disaster. I knew it the second I saw him standing by his car.’

‘How?’

Dora pulled out a cigarette.

‘Here, have a light.’ An arm had shot past Luisa and a man, walking past with his dog, was holding a flame steady for Dora. Dora swooped over the flame, shimmering, almost luminous. It would be worth smoking again to have that effect on people.

Dora fanned the smoke away from Luisa. ‘It didn’t help that he was cross. And late. He was furious. Said his journey was hell. You know, a real moaner. He stopped and had an argument at a farm, he said. Such awful manners, I said. Anyway, that wouldn’t have mattered except he was a giant.’

‘A giant?’

Dora nodded, scooping up a drip of Maddie’s ice cream. ‘Mmm, that’s so good. I almost prefer it liquid. You know, not cold. Yes, huge! From Giant Land. Not a normal tall person.’

Luisa was laughing. ‘How tall is a giant?’

Dora waved her hands to encompass the sky. ‘Nine feet tall – well near enough – and he tucked his shirt into his trousers under his armpits.’

‘That’s quite weird, I agree, it’s funny with first impressions, I—’

‘First impressions?’ Dora was indignant. ‘It was more than an impression. He was definitely huge and definitely in a towering rage. He got even crosser when I said I had to pick up Maddie at three o’clock. He drove off! Left me at the table and went back to Newcastle in a huff. Can you imagine?’ She puffed a smoke ring and sat back.

Luisa suddenly felt very old. A stressful date with an extra-tall stranger was so much less interesting than a recipe for white chocolate mousse ice cream, or an evening with Maddie coming to sleep over.

Dora squinted at her. ‘Mae’s looking cute,’ she said. ‘Wonder if she’s got a boyfriend yet?’

‘She’s only fifteen,’ Luisa protested. ‘She’s too young.’

Dora snorted. ‘God Lou, you’re prehistoric, can’t you remember being that age? She’s a hot bed of hormones, she needs to fall in love, she
must
be in love. I was in love with about five people at once when I was fifteen, and the interest coming back my way was precisely zero, except for some pervert who followed me to the hairdresser’s once and accosted me on the doorstep of Hair to Impress in King’s Lynn and said he’d been watching me.’

Luisa was indignant. ‘Great. Is that what you want Mae to find? A stalker? Why does she have to have a boyfriend anyway?’

Dora patted Luisa’s arm, and squeezed her hand. ‘Calm down, Lou, I was only teasing, Mae’s great, and you know it.’

Mae and Maddie waved from across the street.

‘Here they come,’ Luisa straightened herself. ‘I know you think I’m daft, but wait till Maddie’s this age. It goes like a flash and then they’re almost adults.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Dora shrugged. ‘You know, I sometimes can’t believe Maddie’s my child, she’s so grown up and I swear I only just had her.’

‘Ellie didn’t have a proper boyfriend until she was seventeen,’ mused Luisa. ‘God, if only she’d gone travelling with him instead. He’s on a nature reserve in Costa Rica feeding baby turtles.’

Dora looked at her affectionately. ‘I’m no psycho­logist, Lou, but that sounds like what you’d be doing if it was your gap year. Given the choice, I’m with Ellie: I’d be hitching round India, smoking opium in a nice den any day.’

Luisa shot an annoyed look at Dora, who was leaning back with a teasingly smug smile on her face, and was just about to say how she was sure Ellie wouldn’t know what an opium den was, let alone hang out in one, when Mae and Maddie were upon them.

‘Look, we bought these to take camping. In case I get lost in my sleeping bag.’ Maddie waved a green neon stick and a whistle on a string.

‘Perfect’ said Dora, ‘you’re all set now, aren’t you? Come and sit down here, we’re wondering what Ellie’s up to.’

Mae slid back into a seat and begun tapping at her phone. She looked up again, directing her question at Dora. ‘Can you catch a disease of fancying people? Because my friend Lola’s started saying she fancies everyone. Literally everyone. Even really rank people. She doesn’t have a filter. It’s gross, I think.’

Dora laughed, winked at Luisa. ‘God, I’ve definitely got it! I even quite liked the man who was in here a minute ago.’

‘What man?’ Mae and Luisa spoke at once and bust out laughing.

Dora bit into a biscuit and leaned forwards, demanding conspiracy. ‘Didn’t you see him? He was at the till when I came in. They were wrapping up a huge coffee cake for him. Probably his wife’s birthday.’

‘I reckon his daughter’s,’ said Luisa. ‘I can’t imagine a man buying his wife a cake.’

‘Probably actually his own birthday,’ said Mae, still half-looking at her phone. ‘Men are obsessed with coffee cake. When I was worked at the tearooms in the Easter Holidays it was always the men who ordered the coffee and walnut and the millionaire’s shortbread. Women, ’specially your age, Mum, always say they don’t eat wheat, and then have brownies or carrot cake anyway, it’s so funny.’

‘Really? What about ice cream?’ Luisa was diverted. ‘Do they choose different flavours?’

Mae rolled her eyes. ‘Mum, ice cream is ice cream. You are the
only
person who could
ever
think that there are male and female flavours. If I—’

‘No! She could be right, Mae.’ Dora butted in. ‘And if she is, we can make our fortunes on the back of her.’

‘Yeah, I bet you, it’ll be coffee ice cream for guys.’

Dora bit her lip. ‘I’m going to ask the girl at the counter, that way I can find out about the man I saw as well.’

‘What was he like?’ It seemed suddenly that Mae was nearer Dora’s age than she was. Luisa didn’t want to be left out.

‘Tallish, dark hair, nice voice. Nice shirt, and it was definitely a coffee cake,’ said Dora.

‘Yeah? You noticed all that?’ Mae teased. ‘You’re ill, Dora. But in a good way. There aren’t many grown ups like you.’

Luisa sighed, content. The afternoon was warm, there was no urgency, the cafe table was littered with teacups and cake crumbs, Maddie was drawing a picture in a tiny notebook, Dora and Mae laughing over a text. This small absorbing world belonged to the four of them. Mae leaned against her, and she felt complete. Her family made her whole. Not family the Italian way, all singing, all dancing and drama, the pitting of strength a constant force, and Gina’s iron-willed dominance. This version with Dora, Mae and Maddie, the idle hour after school, no plans and nothing much to do, was the family life she would never have known had she not met Tom. Less intense, less strident than she had grown up with, but no less potent.

Maddie was patting her hand, ‘Auntie Lou did you really have ice cream every day when you were little? Mae says you did.’

Luisa bit her tongue not to laugh. The felt-tip pen dripped a blue pool from Maddie’s blue mouth onto the notebook and the table beneath it.

‘Oops, a bit of clearing up needed.’ She dipped a napkin in a glass of water to wipe Maddie’s face. ‘It’s true. My granddad had an ice-cream van, and I used to go with him sometimes in it.’ Amazing how forgotten memories could flood in with a word or sound. Apple cinnamon ice cream with a knot of purple bubble gum concealed in the scoop was the big flavour the summer Luisa was eighteen. Her holiday job on the ice cream vans had seemed like the ideal way to earn pocket money, until she spent three days of a rare heatwave stuck in the van. The hours crawled, and her best friends cavorted near by in the sea with Matt, otherwise known as The One. Seeing The One giving piggyback rides to Olivia Riscali and racing through the surf with Debbie Marco were low moments in what she had assumed would be the Summer of Love for her and Matt. On autopilot, Luisa had accidentally double scooped glistening balls of Apple Cinnamon Bubblegum ice cream for the queue of garrulous pensioners outside her van, parched after a day on the Great Yarmouth pier. Her inattention, as her grandfather never failed to remind her, had consequences. Even in the ice-cream queue. A gurgling noise penetrated the chatter on that memorable afternoon.

‘What did you put in this? It’s not just ice cream, is it?’ A flustered man waved a half-melted cone at her then bobbed out of sight. Craning reluctantly, Luisa peered out at him, he was bending over a women who had clamped a handkerchief across her mouth. Out of the corner of her eyes Luisa saw The One throw a towel around his shoulders and walk away down the beach with Olivia and Debbie. Her future was vanishing like their three sets of footprints in the tide.

The man bobbed up again, Luisa recoiled. His face in the opening of the van was wild, his hair fizzing crossness, spittle bubbling up from the corner of his mouth. ‘She’s got her teeth stuck in the ice cream,’ he wailed. Luisa contemplated vaulting through the window and sprinting to join her friends. She might have done it, or so she thought, but as she mustered her strength to spring, Olivia reached up a hand and The One caught it, and held it. She didn’t let go. Luisa turned her back and dug a handful of ice from the fridge. ‘Maybe she can get it out if you cool her down a bit?’ she suggested to the hot-faced man.

The scene had bleached in her memories, and the departing backs of her friends had assumed a nostalgic glamour worthy of a Californian teen movie.

‘We actually had six ice-cream vans,’ she told Maddie. ‘And they were all different. They even had names. My favourite one was Lucky. I thought it was real.’

‘Mum, it
was
real, we’ve got pictures. It was striped and there were cones for the wing mirrors.’ Mae rolled her eyes. ‘And you’ve got a Miss Havisham version of it at home. You know, that old wreck you bought off eBay.’

‘It’s gone to the garage, actually,’ said Luisa. ‘I mean real as in alive. I didn’t know you knew about Miss Havisham, darling?’ Always a thrill when one of the children mentioned anything cultural, and even though Tom had told her not to mention it for fear of spoiling it for them, Luisa couldn’t resist.

Mae’s grimace was perfectly pitched to show disdain. ‘We were doing a thing about unrequited love. I hope I don’t get it ever.’

‘Lucky, lucky, lucky,’ chanted Maddie. ‘Mummy, can we have an ice-cream van?’

Dora agreed without listening. ‘What? Yes, later, we’ll get one on the way home. Come on, time to go everyone.’

Gleeful, Maddie skipped at her side, planning a new life. ‘We need to make sure it has the right song playing,’ she said. ‘Something like Jingle Bells, but for summer.’

‘Too right,’ agreed Mae, linking arms with her mother. ‘None of that cheesy piped music. I think it should be rave music, really, that’d wake everyone up.’

On the way to the car, Dora’s phone rang. The shadows were mauve, lingering and soft as a shawl. Luisa remembered she had to pick up Luca on the way home.

Dora waved her arm and rolled her eyes at Luisa as she spoke into the phone. ‘What? Did he ask you anything? How old is he? D’you think so?’ She laughed. ‘Well I’m not convinced. I’ve just had a very bad experience. That’s not the kind of thing I’m interested in.’ She laughed. ‘It’s still bound to be a disaster. I’m not desperate yet, you know!’

Dora ended the call. Luisa raised her eyebrows in a question.

‘Oh, it was a friend,’ said Dora. ‘She’s just got a job in town, and she’s been going on about this guy there. Anyway, she says she’s going to set me up on a date.’

‘Another one? You’re so brave,’ Luisa marvelled.

Dora shrugged. ‘All I know is you have to kiss a lot of frogs,’ she said.

‘Mum!’ Mae swung round to face Luisa. ‘You sound
ancient
. What’s happened to you? It’s like you and Dad are from another world. When you went on dates they probably didn’t even have mobile phones.’

‘They didn’t,’ agreed Luisa, laughing.

‘How did you know where to meet? How did you get out of it if you didn’t like each other?’ Mae shuddered. ‘It’s a miracle anyone in your day got it together.’

‘I think we are a miracle,’ Luisa agreed. ‘It’s been more than twenty years now.’

Shops were closing. From the allotments near the car park, the scent of cut grass wafted towards them, while over a wall, the thwack of a ball sounded the beginning of a game of tennis. Blythe settled with audible contentment after a good day. No passion afoot, no teenage love matches for Mae or dates for Dora tonight. This was the beginning of a family summer. A moment to savour. Luisa wished she could capture the essence of now and paint it or bake it or write it. Just do something with it before it was gone. She reckoned her ice-cream van, if she got it going, might just be the living embodiment of this timeless feeling.

Dora pinched her. ‘Hey look, Lou, there’s the guy I saw earlier.’